OASIS Introduces Open Projects Program to Bridge Open Source and Standards Development

BOSTON (PRWEB) MAY 08, 2019 –OASIS, a global nonprofit consortium, today announced the launch of Open Projects, the first-of-its-kind program that creates a more transparent and collaborative future for open source and standards development. Open Projects gives communities the power to develop what they choose–APIs, code, specifications, reference implementations, guidelines– in one place, under open source licenses, with a path to recognition in global policy and procurement.

The lines between open source and open standards have been blurring for some time, and communities in both arenas have been calling for more flexibility and options for collaboration. Open Projects is a new approach that addresses the need for change in everything from handling IP to governance and decision-making, from funding to establishing trust and assuring quality.

“With Open Projects, we’re building a movement to transform the open source and standards world,” said Gershon Janssen, Chairman, OASIS Board of Directors. “We want to dissolve the barriers that separate communities. We want to empower groups with more control and streamlined governance. We want to support projects by giving them all the process they need–and not a bit more–so they can accomplish great things fast.”

Open Projects builds on the OASIS experience and reputation for producing quality work that’s been trusted and supported by governments and industries worldwide for more than 25 years.

“For many, open source has become a means of establishing de facto software standards. However, de facto standards are not recognized by many governments and institutions,” said Chris Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO Open Tech for IBM. “OASIS Open Projects provides an important new opportunity to leverage the rapid innovation of open source in the process of developing open standards. The potential to achieve ISO, IEC, or ITU standards approval is a huge value for many important open source initiatives.” Ferris, who also holds a leadership position on the Hyperledger Fabric project, played an instrumental role in defining the OASIS Open Projects program and now serves on its Advisory Council.

The Open Projects program is being advanced by some of the most accomplished, regarded minds in open source today. The Open Projects Advisory Council provides strategic insight on the needs of open source projects, identifying current practices that work well and exploring new approaches where improvements can be made with a goal of curating the future of open source. Advisory Council members include:

The OSLC Open Project advances a suite of standard REST APIs to connect data and achieve the digital thread across domains, applications, and organizations. It is sponsored by AirBus, Austrian Institute of Technology, Bank of America, Boeing, Dassault, Fujitsu, IBM, Koneksys, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Red Hat, Siemens, Software AG, and Tasktop.

“OSLC helps create standard REST APIs that solve industry integration challenges,” said Andrew Berezovskyi of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. “Open Projects enables the OSLC community to produce deliverables that meet requirements from various stakeholders without being hindered by the weight of foundation bureaucracy or the baggage that comes with financial, legal, technical, and marketing administration.”

The ODF Advocacy Open Project promotes the world’s leading document standard. After being approved as an OASIS Standard, ODF was recognized by ISO/IEC and endorsed by governments around the world as a way to ensure permanent access to data and eliminate the risk of vendor lock-in. The ODF Advocacy Open Project is sponsored by CIB and The Document Foundation.

“ODF guarantees perennial access to data that can be transferred in a transparent way between different apps, computers and operating systems, getting rid of hidden interoperability costs, vendor lock-in issues and license fees,” said Italo Vignoli, Co-Founder, The Document Foundation.

Additional Open Projects for blockchain and other areas will be announced in the coming months. Further details about OASIS Open Projects are available here or email info@oasis-open-projects.org.

About OASIS

One of the most respected, member-driven standards bodies in the world, OASIS offers projects—including open source projects—a path to standardization and de jure approval for reference in international policy and procurement. OASIS has a broad technical agenda encompassing cybersecurity, privacy, cryptography, cloud computing, IoT–any initiative for developing code, APIs, specifications, or reference implementations can find a home at OASIS. Some of the most widely adopted OASIS Standards include AMQP, CAP, CMIS, DITA, DocBook, KMIP, MQTT, OpenC2, OpenDocument, OSLC, PKCS, SAML, STIX, TAXII, TOSCA, UBL, and XLIFF. Many of these have gone on to be published as ISO, IEC, or ITU standards. New work is encouraged, and all are welcome to participate. http://www.oasis-open.org

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